Author's Note:

Written while listening to Diamonds From Sierra Leone by Kanye West, just love the dark, creepy sound of it.

ERMERGERD RATCHET I LOVE YOU SO MUCH! 3

"Miko, I said no."

"But I want to see Bulkhead!"

Ratchet pinched his brow, the human's petulant and demanding tone not helping his massive processor ache. Resting his servos against the computer, Ratchet muttered, "Miko, I told you. Bulkhead is doing fine. He's stable, and he is going to regain his strength. I can truthfully tell you he is on the mend."

"But I want to SEE him!" There was a small shuffle on the other end of the phone. "Look, Ratchet, it's not the same as you just telling me he's fine, I need to SEE him, TOUCH him, and tell him myself that I'm going to be there when he wakes up . . . because I WILL be there when he wakes up!"

Ratchet rubbed behind his neck before looking over in the direction of his medical area. Cliffjumper sat staring blankly at the wall, seated on the edge of Nightstalker's berth. Cliffjumper worried him. From the two days he had woken up, he really refused to talk about anything. And Cliffjumper refusing to talk . . . That alone could worry Ratchet. He couldn't imagine what was going on in the mech's processor . . . Across the room, Optimus and Arcee were talking vigorously in undertones. Ratchet vented sharply.

"All right, but ONLY if you promise that you be quiet. We've all got enough on our minds, and I don't need the added stress. Got it?"

"Got it." There was a pause. "Um . . . Ratchet?"

He sighed impatiently. "Yes?"

She paused again. "Um . . . we, um . . . Jack and Raf and me . . . We want to see Nightstalker too."

Ratchet felt himself hinge up. He looked over there again, and he couldn't see Nightstalker from the angle, but he knew what she looked like. Primus, he knew exactly what she looked like. Her hips, shoulders, and wrists were still broken as he hadn't been able to get to repairing them yet with everything else on his plate. They were at as natural an angle as he could possibly get them, but it was clear they weren't in the perfectly correct positions. The kids would notice. And they would notice Megatron's claw marks over her wings and her chassis. He could only be thankful Nightstalker was on her back and they wouldn't see the claw marks on her aft plating. Her pelvic region looked normal, but the damage to the inside was catastrophic. When he got to working on her again, he would have to kick them back out.

He passed a servo over his face before muttering, "All right, but ONLY until I get to working on her again! You will leave when I tell you to leave, and you won't ask any questions."

"What's the big deal?" Miko interrupted angrily. "What's so bad that you guys won't tell us? How bad is she? What happened?"

"She's hurt," Ratchet said in a clipped tone. "You'll accept that and not ask any questions or I won't let you come."

"Fine! Jeez! Have Bee pick us up, okay? And Jack wants to talk to Arcee."

Ratchet huffed. "Fine."

Just as he hung up, he heard Arcee scoff in irritation and turn sharply in her heel and stalk away from Optimus. The Prime lifted his voice, calling only, "Arcee—please! . . . Please."

The femme stopped. She rolled her head down with a scowl, and her servos clenched, but her optics danced a little with suppressed passion. Finally, her perked back struts drooped, and she murmured, "All right. Just . . . try not to frag it up again, all right?"

The Prime's jaw worked. "I won't," he whispered in promise.

There was a small moment Ratchet let them have before he said, "Arcee, Jack wants you to pick him up."

She looked up sharply. "What? You're letting them come here?"

A sigh decompressed tiredly from the medic, and he pinched the bridge of his nose, willing the processor ache to leave. "Yes. They're worried, and I've put them off long enough. It's either that or they'll sneak in, and I don't want to run the risks of them seeing what has actually happened to her. She can pass for a rough fight right now. We'll tell them the truth—Megatron got her, beat her to slag. That's it. After all, they know she'd been taken captive on the NEMESIS and Cliffjumper had gone to rescue her. It's plausible enough."

Arcee shuffled, uncomfortable with not telling the truth, but when she looked over at Nightstalker's unresponsive form, she nodded. As she transformed down, Ratchet pinged Bumblebee in the back that the kids wanted picked up, and when he left too, Optimus excusing himself and leaving as well, Ratchet sighed again. He passed a servo over his face, all alone with his patients.

Cliffjumper was patched up. His wounds were on the mend, though he wouldn't be able to transform for quite some time and walking would be an awkward hobble as his leg would take time to heal before he could put his full weight on it. Bulkhead's back was completely welded over, and while Ratchet waited on him to wake from his comatose sleep, he worried about the trauma in his central neural conduit. The Tox-En exposure caused system-wide shut down on a submicronic level, so once Bulkhead had gained some strength back, he operated on him. He was on the mend with an energon cube hooked to him through an IV. All he needed to do now was wake up.

Nightstalker, on the other hand, was a totally different story. A trauma induced by sheer shock of her systems had caused a system-wide shutdown of her central neural conduit as well, but she was recovering quicker as the effect of the Tox-En had lingered with Bulkhead. Her motor lines were slow to recover and sensitive as they were swelled and puckered. Her T-Cog was in one piece, so her transformation sequence wouldn't be hampered, but Ratchet feared that if he couldn't get the infection blooming in her motor lines to heal, she would suffer either a permanent pain every time she transformed or would completely lose her motor lines and never be able to transform again.

Her coolant tanks had been removed, repaired, inserted again, and filled with the liquid that cooled her systems and kept the fever down as first priority. Fluid lines were pinched together, letting the coolant flow smoothly. He had yet to oil her hydraulic pistons, but something like that could be put off for more pressing things. He carefully monitored her spark and soothed it with a thick, medicated energon to allow the scratches to heal over. For all his trouble, her spark always beat steadily, albeit if weakly at times.

He had opened her chest plating to find the energon sacks ripped to shreds. He cleaned the area and closed the plating, and he wouldn't open it again for weeks. Her "breasts" as humans so coined the sacks, would again fill with life-nourishing liquid and it would take weeks for the film to cover it thick enough to even be opened again. It would take months before they would recover to their full strength, the same thick, waxy surface that protected the spark.

He would get to working on her broken shoulders next. Still, he couldn't do that in the short time that the humans would get there, so he merely opened Nightstalker's interfacing plating—of which he had replaced—and again inspected her valve. The damage was catastrophic. The neural lines had been so completely ravaged that he hadn't been able to salvage them. He didn't have the bio mechanics to heal that kind of damage. Her nerve endings were gone.

She wouldn't ever feel anything in her valve again. Ratchet wasn't sure if that was a good or bad thing.

Instead, Ratchet walked past Cliffjumper who was deep in withdrawal and went down the halls of the base to where the kids had left the bucket and cleaning supplies. The humans took a great deal of pride in cleaning their vehicular partners. Ratchet filled the bucket and took the tiny rag before returning to Nightstalker's side.

Then, dipping the cloth into the water, he began to wipe her down. The dust coated her nearly from head to foot because he'd only taken the time to clear away her broken armor and enough of an area that he could have a clean working space.

As he did so, his mind drifted to Wheeljack and Miko. He wasn't impressed with their revenge stunt on Hardshell. The peril they put themselves in was inconceivable in his mind, and there was no way to repair crushed human. He could only be thankful that Wheeljack had the cogs to leave and tend his own injuries instead of adding more weight to the already stretched thin medic.

His optics flicked up to Cliffjumper. He still just stared at the wall. He was still in shock, that much Ratchet deduced, but he also worried. He knew there was nothing Cliffjumper could be doing but either reliving the horror of what happened or thinking. And, if he was thinking, Ratchet worried he was thinking along the lines of Wheeljack and Miko—

Revenge.

Pit, it had crossed his mind once or twice, but he was old enough to realize revenge never helped anything. But Cliffjumper . . . As Ratchet's servo passed the rag over Nightstalker's forearm, his optics flicked back up to Cliffjumper. He'd never seen the mech like this. Even in the face of some of the darkest things, things that would shatter the soul of even the strongest mech, he had seen Cliffjumper take it to the chin and move on. That was just how Cliffjumper rolled, but now . . . Something was really messing with his processor. And while Ratchet stressed over Cliffjumper's wellbeing, he knew he had to give the mech time. The only way he would open up was of his own accord.

As Ratchet washed one of Nightstalker's peds, he felt a small hitch echo in his systems as it suddenly struck him how tiny and breakable she was. His own servo even swallowed her ankle, and it rotated so easily it scared him because he knew he had the strength to snap that ankle. Even Arcee could. If he put his mind to it, he wouldn't put it past Jack that the human had enough strength to hurt Nightstalker if he really chose. He couldn't quite understand how she had managed all of these years without someone to protect her . . .

He ignored his aching spark. He dunked the rag back in the water, and he moved restlessly to her helm, digging the cloth under the edges of her helm to remove the dust from the cave. A couple extra drops of salty water dripped on her cheek. Irritably, Ratchet reached up and wiped his cheeks before setting his jaw stubbornly and breathing steady in cycles.

A vision of Optimus carrying Nightstalker assaulted his processor. His servos began to shake. Primus, there had been so much energon spilled everywhere that she had been more blue than black—the human-coined phrase "beaten black and blue" came to mind, and a bitter laugh choked in his throat. More than beaten. Raped within an inch of her life. His servos shook so hard he almost couldn't finish. His jaw ticked with suppressed emotion flooding to the surface. She had been so broken he almost didn't register that it was her, mangled and gutted and cold as death—

A harsh cry ripped from his vocals. Ratchet dropped the rag with hunching shoulders, and his servos tore at his helm as he turned away, crying out shortly again.

I can't do this! I can't do this!

He staggered to the side, pressing his palms flat against the wall to hold himself up as he trembled.

I can't do it, Primus, I can't . . . It's too much, she's falling apart at the seams, and there's nothing I can do . . . I haven't even begun to think about how this is going to affect her processor! Primus, Primus, Primus, please . . .

He sank into the wall, the strength he had left draining from him. Tears began to sting his optics, and his servos fisted.

At this rate she may never transform again. She'll never feel the overload of an interface again, a REAL overload! One with love and passion, not lust and domination. I'm killing her of the flying she loves and the chance to feel a kind of infatuation that's more than just protoform deep . . .

His spark throbbed in pain. He knew Optimus had what it took to cherish this femme. He knew she needed someone like that to show her the true side of love—a tender touch, a compassionate heart, and the patience of a saint.

No. No, I can't let up now. I've done too much to quit on her right now . . . Ratchet leaned up, pressing his helm against the unforgiving wall. Get yourself together, Ratchet. There's too much at stake here to just lie down and accept defeat. Nightstalker needs me.

Even as he felt the stress eating away at his insides, he glanced down to Nightstalker who was still in her comatose sleep. His spark melted and agonized.

In the seclusion of the main room of the silo, Cliffjumper not paying any more attention to him than the air, Ratchet knelt, taking her helm in both his servos and pressing his forehead against hers.

"I'm sorry," he whispered softly. His grip tightened. "I'm here for you. I won't give up on you, I promise. I will do EVERYTHING in my power to save you. I won't give up, I promise, just . . . Promise me that you aren't going to give up."

The silence that answered him depressed him, but then he realized it wasn't silent. Her spark beat chirped cheerfully, consistently from his computers, and his tears began to spill over. He pressed his lips to Nightstalker's forehead, and he rested his face against hers, silent tears dripping.

A car engine woke him from his despair. Standing up, Ratchet quickly wiped his face and Nightstalker's before picking up the rag and setting it aside with the bucket, steadying his in cycles. Within an instant, he had covered up all his emotions.

Bumblebee and Arcee drove up to the edge of the medical area, letting out the children before transforming up. Bumblebee's optics kept jumping to and from Nightstalker because looking at her was painful. Arcee's lips pressed into a grim line.

Miko bolted right for Bulkhead while Raf and Jack stopped at Nightstalker. With a little help from Jack, Raf had scrambled up on the berth and stopped near her helm. His little fingers reached out to touch her face.

"Nights?"

Raf knelt and hugged around her neck, burying his face into her to hide his tears. Jack's throat worked as he looked over her, and his eyes lingered over her hips before he looked up to the unconscious Bulkhead. He put his hand on Raf before he looked up to Ratchet.

"What's the damage?"

What was the damage. Too extensive on Nightstalker that he could even elaborate on. "Bulkhead's neural conduit took massive damage. The shock spread through his systems, and I fear it has been affecting his legs. Levels are low, and I fear his comatose sleep is only adding to the problem. When he wakes up, I fear he may have to relearn how to walk."

Jack winced slightly. He dropped his head, jaw tightening. "And . . . Nightstalker?"

"It's apparent I still have work to do," Ratchet said bitterly before he could stop himself. He scowled and looked away. "Her motor lines are inflamed and she's still feverish. I'm doing all I can to control her temperature. And, if her motor lines don't heal . . . she may not ever transform again."

Raf looked up with watery eyes, and he took off his glasses to wipe his eyes. "B-But I thought . . . I thought transforming was because of the T-Cog?"

Ratchet turned his back to them, unable to look them in their faces or let them see the unbridled passion raging across his own features. "The motor lines are a vital part as well. Without them, we wouldn't move, wouldn't contort as we do and transform."

Miko stood, keeping her hand on Bulkhead as she turned to look at the medic's back. "So Bulkhead's going to be okay?"

"Yes."

"And Nightstalker?"

A deafening pause.

"I don't know."

Jack's eyes trailed over the scratches on Nightstalker's wings. Ratchet pressed a stressed palm to his forehead before muttering, "I need an energon cube," and left brusquely, bucket and rag with him.

He went to their energon storage and grabbed a cube before closing it. One servo braced against the door to their stash and the other trembled. The liquid blue energy quivered in the cube. He drained it in one long draught like it was high grade, wishing it was high grade.

However, when he went back to head to the silo again with the bucket refilled with cold water to help tame Nightstalker's raging fever, Jack stood in the hallway, blocking his way. The human's throat worked.

"Ratchet, what really happened?"

The medic didn't flinch. "Megatron attacked when Nightstalker and Cliffjumper were trying to escape the NEMESIS."

"I know that. What did he do to her that she ended up like that?"

Ratchet gave an indefinite gesture. "I don't know. I wasn't present at the time of the attack, and Cliffjumper refuses to speak about it."

"Ratchet," Jack stressed tightly, "I'm not stupid. Her hips are broken. Why?" When the medic gave the slightest hesitation, Jack whispered with a pale face, "Ratchet . . . I'm not stupid . . . I just . . . Need to know . . ." When Ratchet couldn't bring himself to say it, Jack began to shake a little, gasping as he tried to swallow the force of the truth. "God, please no . . . He didn't really . . . rape her, did he?"

The handle of the bucket snapped in Ratchet's clenching servo. The bucket fell with a crash and spilled across the floor.

Neither male paid attention to it. Instead, Jack fought the bile in his throat as he thought about the implications of that statement, the sheer size difference between Nightstalker and Megatron, and how ruined Nightstalker was. Though his stomach rolled, he controlled the sickening nausea and rasped, "Ratchet . . . How much is really wrong with her? Under the surface?"

The medic closed his optics. "Rape of that magnitude . . ." Tears started to sting his optics again, so he looked up, letting them pool beneath his lids. "Jack, I'm lucky she's hung on as long as she had. I thought at first that Megatron's rape had killed her for sure."

"SHE WAS RAPED?"

Ratchet's optics snapped open to see a horrified Miko with her arms crossed over her chest with sympathy fear of what rape could do to her. She shook, eyes wide at what the product of her eavesdropping had given her. Her shriek carried across the silo.

"WHAT DO YOU MEAN SHE WAS RAPED!"

Miko turned and bolted from the hallway and back into the main room of the silo. Ratchet and Jack followed, Ratchet shouting, "Miko, wait!" However, Miko just stood at the foot of Nightstalker's berth, shaking in horror and blanched white as she took in Nightstalker's injuries with a different insight. Raf's brown eyes looked up at Ratchet.

"Ratchet?" he asked in a quivering voice. His eyes were dark—he knew it was something horrible. "What's rape?"

Ratchet's in cycles seized at the boy's innocent question for something so heinous. Instead, it was Cliffjumper that finally loosened his fused vocals to say, "Nothing you need to know."

Raf's lips pressed. "W-What do you mean?"

"You don't need to know!" Cliffjumper barked. He didn't look at the boy, but he regretted his sharp tone. Miko suddenly glared up at him.

"And why did you stop it!" she shouted angrily.

Cliffjumper winced before he glared blackly at the human. Her eyes widened, and she took a step back. "I had a gun to my head," he said shortly. His servos fisted. "And I'm starting to think I should have taken the bullet. She's obviously suffered for everything I haven't done, so slag like me doesn't deserve to live, right?" He slammed his fists down on either side of Miko, making her scream shortly in fear as he bellowed, "So DON'T push me, Miko! Next thing I know is that I'll have actually killed myself instead of just thinking about it!"

She cowered, shaking and gasping in fear at his sudden snap—and there it went. The careful control he had kept over the past two days. Cliffjumper stood, shivering violently at the remembrance of the revolting scene and in fear at himself, afraid of where his own train of thought would lead him.

"I'm sorry," he whispered. He began to stagger a halting walk towards the hall, but Ratchet extended a servo in front of him.

"Cliffjumper. Where are you going?"

"A wash," he said. "I need to get the dust of that cave off of me . . ."

After a moment of hesitation, the medic let him go, and his worried optics followed the scarred warrior down the hall.

The walk to the showers was one of the longest Cliffjumper had taken in his life. His leg wanted to nearly buckle beneath him it hurt so much to put the slightest weight down on it, but he doggedly kept on, waning to wash himself of the dust that clung to him like a cloud. Once in the showers, he found Optimus brooding tensely beneath a sharp spray. The Prime looked up to him with hollow optics, and Cliffjumper gave a vague shrug his way before joining him and locking the demons back in his spark.

The heat of the spray was only a minor soothing thing. Cliffjumper turned his face up to the water, venting sharply and tried to prepare an apology for Miko and Raf.

"Cliffjumper, I need to speak to you."

The warrior gave a shrug. "Sir?"

He tilted his neck, letting the water run down his neck and into the cracks of his armor. "Cliffjumper," Optimus said heavily, "I have a confession to make . . ."

"I'm not a priest."

"But you need to hear this." Cliffjumper shrugged vaguely again, ducking his head and letting the water swallow him whole until there was nothing left inside his soul. He vented, trying to relax and ease the kinks that knotted up with stress.

"Cliffjumper . . . I allowed Nightstalker to go to Megatron."

He froze. Cliffjumper slowly looked over at Optimus.

" . . . What?"

Optimus's throat worked, but he nodded. "Yes. I allowed her to go to Megatron. I thought . . . that perhaps she could bring back my brother." When Cliffjumper just stared, seemingly frozen, Optimus felt prompted to add, "Cliffjumper, I know this was wrong. I can only ask that you forgive me for—"

"You pitted Nightstalker's life against Megatronus?" Cliffjumper interrupted shortly. He turned to fully face the Prime, optics blazing and dancing. After guilty hesitation, Optimus nodded. "Is he that important to you? Is Megatronus THAT important that you'd bet our lives against him!" Cliffjumper began to shake, so full of pent up passions that he almost couldn't see straight. "Is he so important that the family you have now isn't enough for you? You've gotta stop living in the then, Optimus, and start living in the NOW!"

Cliffjumper's in takes seized sharply, and now that he had gotten started, it was all spilling out, unbridled and desperate. "Oh Primus, Optimus, you didn't SEE it! You just saw how she was left—Oh Primus, the energon! She looked like a child she was so small in his fist and the way those thrusts decimated her so gruesomely that he might as well have just shoved a pole inside her and beaten her to death from the inside out! And she screamed and screamed and begged and cried and I just stood there like a miss-clock glitch and let him do it—!"

Cliffjumper choked on his tears he was crying so hard, servos curled into tight fists and shaking so hard he almost couldn't breathe. "He OVERLOADED in her, Optimus!" he screamed. "Right in front of me, fucking her like she was a slut, and he choked her so hard I thought he'd break her neck—"

His servos covered his face with a distraught cry, and he pitched to his knees, trembling and sobbing. "And I just watched it! Primus—the sound of things breaking—the snapping, the smacking, the energon bleeding from her everywhere—and he raped her spark—oh Primus! Her spark! He—He—Her spark—oh Primus!"

At this point, his words were unintelligible in his broken hysteria, and Optimus tried to placate him without luck. His crying and screaming was only broken by him purging his tanks in remembrance, and by the time Optimus had taken his first step to fetch Ratchet the medic was in the showers and ordered him out. Optimus left, and he could hear Cliffjumper's disturbed screams carrying over the silo.

Ratchet took this time to get Cliffjumper to speak. He let him scream and cry all his rage until he was weak and limp on the floor before he asked him questions, digging for his grievances and soothing them. More rage. More disconnection. More despair. More weeping.

The cold shower sprayed over them, cooling Cliffjumper's systems feverish with passions.

Bulkhead woke up. Miko was ecstatic, but the former Wrecker didn't want to listen to his CMO and refused to believe his legs were nearly lamed from trauma.

The first thing he did was fall. The second thing he did was get up and sit back down. The third was to hold back all his broken spark so he wouldn't scare Miko with his tears.

Miko enthusiastically took over Bulkhead's recovery help as much as she could, helping him exercise and being the cheerleader the former Wrecker needed to keep going. His rock of strength, ten times smaller than himself.

Oddly, Bulkhead held no anger towards Hardshell, only relief that he had made it and frustration at his disability. The green mech didn't look back on his woes, but focused on his present woes, unable to see into the future to where he would recover.

Optimus spoke with him. Bulkhead was shocked, but more disappointed than angry. He said he was so tired he just couldn't find it in him to be angry. He trusted the leader to give him a second chance and asked him to apologize to Nightstalker.

Optimus promised he would.

And so things went in the base. The Decepticons seemed quiet at this point, and it was a good respite that they all needed to gather their bearings and steel their broken will. Cliffjumper was quieter, but apologized to Miko and Raf thoroughly and moved on as well as he could. Arcee was a surprising rock of strength for him. He didn't know what to think that she was helping him after the way they had broken off.

Instead, the week stretched. At various times, Nightstalker would suffer terrible, comatose nightmares, scream and thrash as much as her broken body could. Her fever would wan towards recovery and then she would slip back twice as worse. Ratchet stressed, but bottled it all up again, vowing not to snap again. Nightstalker's motor lines stayed inflamed, and Ratchet managed to salvage the parts in her shoulders to fix them again. It felt like he was repairing a human—she would have to work the strength back into her arms. She was as weak as a newborn sparkling.

As Ratchet finished working on her other shoulder, checking both for functionality, Cliffjumper watched impassively as Nightstalker was slowly put back together.

Cliffjumper swallowed as he looked down on Nightstalker's still form. "H-Hey Ratch . . ." When his voice was naught but a hoarse whisper, he cleared his throat in the effort to speak louder, but it didn't help. His throat felt tight. "Do you . . . do you think she'll ever wake up?"

There was a pause. And then, quick and sharp as he could count on Ratchet, "Don't be ridiculous. She will wake up. Just give her a little time."

"I've given her time," Cliffjumper rasped back. "It's been a week. Not a stir. I—I need something. SOMETHING, Ratchet, anything . . . She's so still I feel like I'm staring at death . . ." His voice seized harshly a moment. He shook his helm, dropping his face into his servos.

"Then listen."

At his words, Cliffjumper lent his audio receptors but didn't hear anything in the silent silo except . . . That lump in his throat brought the stinging tears forth.

Ratchet didn't need to say anything more and bent over Nightstalker as he double checked his work on her, but Cliffjumper wept softly, tears seeping from between his fingers at the steady beat of the machine.

Her spark beat. It beat full and strong through the machine, consistently. The beeping cut through the silence as a promise, and Cliffjumper grasped hold of it, spark reaching out.

You make it for me, Nights. Promise me you won't give up.

Her spark beat back at him.